Last June, at the invitation of the Moroccan Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs, I gave a series of lecture at different Moroccan educational institutions. This is the text of the first lecture I gave, at the esteemed Qarawiyyin University in Fez. It was a great honor for me to give a lecture at this venue, which is arguably the oldest university in the world and without doubt one of the oldest centers for the study of Maliki law.

My lecture, which was delivered to the University President, senior administration, and graduate students in Islamic law, raised the question of the legitimacy of the modern state from the perspective of Islamic law, the sharia. I argued, contrary to certain Islamist groups and post-modern intellectuals, that there is no reason to believe that the modern state is per se illegitimate from the perspective of Islamic law.

Drawing on the Maliki tradition of Islamic law, I show that the legitimacy of decisions of rulers is not based on substantive conformity with the shari’a (or justice) as much as it is based on the consent of the ruled and the substance of the decision not being manifestly unjust. Based on this principle, I argue that states that enjoy popular legitimacy are, by virtue of that fact alone, substantially legitimate from the perspective of Islamic law. Accordingly, working toward achieving representative institutions that enjoy effective public consent is a crucial condition for the legitimacy of the modern Muslim state.

With regard to what it means for a decision not to be manifestly unjust, I also rely on Maliki authors to point out that jurists did not demand that particular decisions be in conformity with what jurists believed was the correct rule of the Shari’a, only that decisions not violate certain clear rules and principles of the Shari’a. Finally, I pointed out that what many radical Islamists take to be “ruling based on something other than what God has revealed” — and therefore is illegitimate or worse — is in fact nothing more than the state exercising its lawful discretion to organize the public interest through the issuance of positive laws. Far from undermining the shari’a, these help make the law more effective by replacing informal and discretionary methods of dispute resolution with clear rules.

Over the last few days, I received several personal emails from Jewish attorneys in Toronto, expressing alarm and pain after learning from a B’nai Brith Canada press release that I had included a picture of Justice Spiro in my Twitter profile, along with a quote from political theorist and jurist Carl Schmitt, who also happened to be a Nazi. They also thought the phrase in my Twitter profile, “Schmitt lives in Toronto,” was a reference to Justice Spiro. They therefore concluded that I had compared Justice Spiro to a Nazi. I replied to them politely, but without a thorough explanation why I chose the Twitter profile picture that I did, and why it included one of Carl Schmitt’s most (in)famous statements. Although I never intended to compare Justice Spiro to a Nazi, I can understand in retrospect why some people understood that my twitter profile did just that. I am deeply sorry for the pain that I unintentionally caused them.

I feel that I also owe them an explanation. My intent with the profile and the adoption of the moniker “Schmitt Lives in Toronto” was to highlight both the lawlessness Justice Spiro displayed in his actions in connection with the hire of Dr. Azarova, and the weak-kneed institutional response of the University and the Faculty of Law to his conduct.

The lawyers who reached out to me were right to note that Carl Schmitt was a Nazi who played a role in the rise of the Nazi Party to power in German in the 1930s, and I certainly agree that his politics and actions were loathsome.

But Schmitt was much more than a run-of-the-mill Nazi apparatchik: even before the rise of Nazism, he had been recognized as a prominent conservative legal professor and a powerful critic of liberalism and the liberal ideals of the rule of law. Unfortunately, despite his association with Nazism, his writings have made a comeback in the post-9/11 world. Questions similar to those he posed in Weimar Germany about the relationship of the rule of law versus emergency law have re-emerged in the wake of 9/11. Some contemporary scholars found his searing critique of liberalism appealing, even while distancing themselves from his Nazism. For example, legal scholars such as Paul Kahn at Yale, and Adrian Vermeule at Harvard, who are each critical of liberalism in his own way, have adapted elements of Schmitt’s political critique of liberalism to their own analysis of American law. 

While the ongoing appeal of Schmitt deeply disturbs me, he has become a central figure in contemporary jurisprudential debates involving issues of democracy, constitutional law and the liberal ideal of the rule of law. Anyone concerned with preserving liberal ideals of the rule of law in today’s environment must contend with Schmitt’s critique of liberalism and the rule of law. Indeed, one of my colleagues at the Law Faculty, David Dyzenhaus, has written extensively and eloquently, in defense of the liberal ideal of the rule of law and against Schmittian conceptions of the law and politics. Outside of the narrow circle of political and constitutional theorists, and some critical humanities scholars, however, Schmitt is an obscure figure, and so it is not surprising that my twitter profile could cause confusion.

I decided to change my twitter profile to a picture of Justice Spiro, with the quote “The sovereign is he who decides the exception” shortly after the release of the Cromwell Report, and after the University and the Faculty used it to claim full vindication of their conduct after Justice Spiro intervened to block Dr. Azarova’s appointment as director of the International Human Rights Program. The University continued to claim vindication despite the searing criticism that had been leveled at the incompleteness of the Report and its unjustified conclusions by voices within the Faculty of Law and voices outside of it. I observed that Justice Spiro’s intervention and the reaction of the Faculty and the University to it, raised in principle – albeit at a much smaller scale – some of the same theoretical problems concerning how to respond to breaches of the rule of law that we at the Faculty of Law have been discussing over the last two decades since 9/11.

One of Schmitt’s most important critiques of liberalism is that liberals constitute a “chattering class.” He asserts that liberals, when push comes to shove, lack the moral courage to defend the rule of law against authoritarian assertions of sovereign privilege, even when democracy itself is threatened. I adopted the phrase “Schmitt Lives in Toronto” as a critique of the University of Toronto and the Faculty of Law’s reaction to the IHRP hiring scandal. From my perspective these institutions behaved in precisely the fashion that Schmitt predicted when their norms were threatened: by backing down. In my opinion, the institutional response to Justice Spiro’s conduct was, and to a large extent has been, one of paralysis, served with a large dollop of wishful thinking on the side. The institutional indifference to Justice Spiro’s intervention in the IHRP matter sadly confirmed Schmitt’s criticism of liberals.

As for Justice Spiro himself, his conduct mirrored that of the Schmittian sovereign. He flagrantly disregarded the applicable norms of the rule of law when he interfered in Dr. Azarova’s hire and arrogated to himself the prerogative of excepting himself from ordinary legal norms that apply to others.

Justice Spiro gave himself the authority to breach at least three different sets of legal norms, ostensibly out of concern to deal with the “emergency” arising out of the imminent hire of a scholar who had written critically of Israel and in solidarity with Palestinian human rights.

First, he must have known that the information CIJA received regarding Azarova’s imminent hire was obtained by means of an unauthorized disclosure. Legal ethics prohibited him from taking advantage of that unauthorized disclosure. Yet, that did not stop him from contacting the University and further relay additional confidential that he acquired from his contacts within the University back to CIJA.

Second, he knew that as a judge, the judicial code of ethics prohibited him from involving himself in a controversial political issue. Yet, he interfered anyway.

Third, he knew that it was inappropriate for him – from the perspective of the University and the Faculty of Law of which he considers himself a close friend– to attempt to influence a hiring process. Yet, he did so anyway.

That he did so for what he believed were altruistic reasons makes it no less an exercise of the “exception” and no less subversive of the rule of law.

Justice Spiro, it is true, has expressed “contrition” over his conduct before the Canadian Judicial Council. To my knowledge, however, he has not apologized to those whom his conduct most directly injured: Dr. Azarova, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law’s student body, and the Faculty of Law itself. He has taken no concrete steps, to my knowledge, to rectify his breaches of the norms of legality that apply to all of us, to say nothing of the norms applicable to the conduct of a sitting judge, whom we reasonably expect to abide by such norms more strictly than the ordinary citizen.

It has never been my intention to compare Justice Spiro to a Nazi: I don’t need to invent false charges to be critical of his conduct and the conduct of the University of Toronto in this sad affair. Rather, my intention was to draw parallels between the attack on academic freedom and the University’s acquiescence and broader attacks on liberal democracy and the fragility of the rule of law. I should have considered that those who aren’t versed in contemporary debates around Schmitt and his writings could interpret the choices I made on my Twitter profile differently and would be hurt as a result. Unfortunately, I didn’t, and I am deeply sorry.

Besides the procedural limitations inherent in the Cromwell Report that render its contested factual conclusions essentially worthless, the conclusory nature of its legal conclusions equally undermine its persuasiveness.

The principle substantive legal controversy was whether an offer was made to Dr. Azaravo and she accepted that offer, in which case the former dean’s actions would have amounted to a breach of contract, not merely repudiation of an offer.

Justice Cromwell disposes of this question in a couple of sentences:

The law of contract formation is notoriously ambiguous, and as a non-Canadian lawyer, I am in no position to comment on whether the communications between the Assistant Dean and Dr. Azarova were sufficient to form a contract under Canadian law. What I do know, however, is that Justice Cromwell reaches his conclusion that no contract was formed without any legal analysis. He simply concludes, without applying the relevant doctrinal elements of a contract to the facts, that no contract was formed. As students who have taken my classes know, that kind of defective reasoning can never earn more than a passing mark. It is certainly not what we would expect from a retired Supreme Court Justice.

But whether a breach of contract occurred is a mere distraction from the principle issue: was the dean motivated by an improper purpose when he took an adverse employment decision against Dr. Azarova, whether we call that termination of an offer or breach of a contract? This too is a complex claim, entailing substantive elements — what is an improper motive, and is it even relevant in an administrative post subject to the dean’s discretion — and an evidentiary component, namely what kind of evidence is required to show an improper motive if indeed motive is legally relevant in determining the validity of the dean’s action?

Although Justice Cromwell fails to describe the substantive legal framework structuring his inquiry, we can assume that he agrees that the former dean, even if he had plenary authority over who filled that office, did not have the right to exclude a candidate based on the political complaints of third parties unrelated to the academic and professional qualifications of the candidate. Indeed, he states that the University agreed with that position as well.

But Justice Cromwell crucially omits the evidentiary burden that those challenging the former dean’s decision must meet in order to prevail. I discussed this glaring omission in a recent twitter thread. While he gave his notorious conclusion — “I would not draw the inference that the Dean’s decision was influenced by improper considerations resulting from the Alumnus’ inquiry” — he leaves out the evidentiary basis that was required for him to reach a contrary conclusion.

We don’t know, for example, if he was of the view that proof of wrongdoing against a dean can only be satisfied by “clean and compelling” evidence — a standard a little less demanding than the criminal law’s requirement of beyond a reasonable doubt — or whether he was applying the “more likely than not” standard which is ordinarily what prevails in civil litigation, or whether he was applying an even more demanding standard, namely, that the dean could only be found to have violated his duties if no innocent explanation can be posited for his conduct. Given the procedural limitations of his inquiry, his conclusions are consistent with all of these standards. The fact that he did not tell us what standard of proof he was applying is just another reason why his findings can’t possibly bind any third-parties.

Even assuming he was a court of last resort (which the former Justice Cromwell was not), different evidentiary standards have an important role in determining the preclusive effects of a judgment. Accordingly, if he believed that he could not find against the dean in the absence of clear and compelling evidence, or only if no innocent explanation could be found for his conduct, than his evidentiary requirements would be much more demanding than that of a different tribunal, that of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, for example, or that of a trial court applying a more likely than not standard.

In short, because Justice Cromwell did not explain to us the relevant evidentiary demands required to prove the case, we are not in a position to know whether his conclusions should be respected by third-party observers who may not be bound to the same evidentiary demands. He might believe, for example, that given the role of the dean in the governance structure of the university, his discretionary actions should only be overturned with clear and convincing evidence. But that concern would not bind CAUT in its deliberations, which are concerned not with the dean as an administrator, but with the effect of a decision on academic freedom. In short, the former dean might be entitled to broad, even sweeping, deference in one forum, but little to no deference in another, given the difference in the nature of the remedies at stake.

In the two letters that President Marc Gertler of the University of Toronto sent to faculty and librarians this week, the first on April 20 and the second on April 23, President Gertler claimed that Justice Cromwell made factual findings that exonerate the University from the charge that it interfered in the academic freedom of Dr. Azarova when, as Justice Cromwell put, “advanced negotiations” were “abruptly halted.” (p. 12 of the Cromwell Report).

In the April 20 letter, President Gertler stated the following:

In the April 23 letter, President Gertler, following the decision of the Canadian Association of University Teachers to censure the University of Toronto in a 79-0 vote, essentially reiterated what he had said two days prior to the CAUT hearing:

President Gertler seems genuinely puzzled that his argument — that Justice Cromwell’s conclusions should end discussion — has fallen on deaf ears. Perhaps that is because he is receiving some really bad legal advice.

In this twitter thread, I explained that Justice Cromwell’s conclusions of fact — other than those facts which in his Report are uncontested — are entitled to zero deference because the posture of the investigation that he conducted is best understood from the perspective of a judge ruling on a Rule 20 motion for summary judgment. In it I explained that the judge’s role in ruling on a summary judgment is limited to determining whether sufficient facts remain in dispute to warrant a full trial of the facts. Denial of a plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment — in this case, essentially moving for a finding of wrongdoing on the part of the former dean — means no more than that Justice Cromwell believed that the former dean has an evidentiary basis on which he could mount a defense to a charge that his decision was motivated by an improper purpose, namely, to satisfy the demands of Justice Spiro and his political allies. The most important factual basis for the former dean’s defense is that he believed that September 30 was a hard starting date. Because it became apparent to the former Dean that Dr. Azarova could not obtain a work permit by that date, nor would a temporary independent contractor agreement with her be feasible, the former Dean concluded — in his version of the facts — that an offer was not viable so he terminated it.

But that is not the only version of the facts included in the Cromwell Report. Two members of the Search Committee, one a tenured professor in the Faculty of Law, and the other a paid part of the IHRP staff at the time, both denied that September 30 was a hard deadline. Furthermore, the tenured professor believed that an independent contractor arrangement would have been viable, a fact corroborated by the undisputed fact that the University of Toronto had used independent contractor arrangements with other potential hires until they could obtain work permits (p 19 of the Cromwell Report).

So, here we have a dispute about a material fact: was September 30 a hard deadline or not? Justice Cromwell stated that he was not in a position to resolve such contested because he could not make credibility assessments.

In view of that, how are we to understand his decision to credit the former Dean’s version? We are required to take Justice Cromwell at his word: that he was “not to resolve point on which memories differ.” But if we accept my argument that he was acting as though he were resolving a summary judgment motion against the defendant, in this case the former Dean, he behaved as a judge would behave in those circumstances: he made all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party, which required him to assume that the Dean’s version was true. But this is not a finding of fact that deserves any deference. It only means that he could not adjudicate between the contested claims of two members of the search committee, and the claim of the Dean and the Assistant Dean.

Why not? What safeguards were absent from this process that precluded Justice Cromwell from making definitive findings? In short, all the ordinary procedural rights that attach to individuals who participate in civil litigation.

First, none of the “testimony” that Justice Cromwell obtained was taken under oath subject to the penalty of perjury.

Second, and unlike a deposition in civil litigation, the “witnesses” were not subject to cross-examination by the opposing party. This means that there was no opportunity to ask the former Dean or Assistant Dean obvious questions, like, “If September 30 was a hard deadline, why wasn’t it communicated to the Preferred Candidate on August 11?” or “Why is the only evidence of September 30 being a hard deadline oral statements from the Dean and the Assistant Dean made long after the controversy came to light?”

Third, Justice Cromwell — as far as we know — did not employ a court reporter to record the testimony of the parties. Therefore, the oral evidentiary record was not likely to have been pristinely preserved. As far as I know, Justice Cromwell did not share his notes with all the parties so that they could have a fair appraisal of all the evidence in the case. Indeed, President Gertler points out in both letters that Justice Cromwell was the only person in possession with all relevant materials, as though that is a virtue, when in fact it is a reflection of the very constraints that Justice Cromwell mentioned on page 12 of his report that prevented him from resolving factual disputes. Not only did Justice Cromwell not make available complete transcripts of his interviews with the various participants to all the parties, he also did not share with them copies of the emails that he reviewed. Accordingly, it is impossible for a third-party to determine whether his factual account is in any way incomplete or even misleading in light of the material he gathered. It accordingly lacks the transparency required to afford conclusions of fact preclusive effects.

Because the parties were also unrepresented by lawyers, none were present to object to the kinds of questions Justice Cromwell asked. As far as we know, he might have elicited answers using leading questions or other inappropriate modes of coaxing information from witnesses, mistakes which we rely on our adversarial system to prevent.

In short, there are so many procedural shortcomings to Justice Cromwell’s “investigation,” that no legal doctrine justifies according its factual conclusions any deference whatsoever, except with respect to its uncontested facts, which essentially amount to admissions against interest, and therefore fall under one of the exceptions to the hearsay rule. Accordingly, all the witness statements about communicating Justice Spiro’s political concerns about Dr. Azarova would be admissible in a trial, even if the parties themselves — the AVP, the Assistant Dean Alumni and Development, and the Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Law — refused to testify under oath to the same facts.

In short, the Cromwell Report is nothing more than an expensive and wasteful exercise in public relations, intended to shore up the University’s image. Unfortunately, the uncontested facts of the Report make things worse. I don’t think anyone could have imagined the eager willingness of University Advancement and administrative officers — two of whom are lawyers — to betray the confidentiality of the hiring process.

In light of their failure to mount even token resistance to Justice Spiro’s improper attempt to scuttle Dr. Azarova’s hire, and the obvious wrongfulness of his request — after all, even Justice Spiro told the AVP, and she so stated to Justice Cromwell that it would be improper for him to communicate his concerns directly to the former Dean — it is borderline shocking that Justice Cromwell attributes this failure to the absence of a written policy (p. 70 of the Cromwell Report).

One would have thought that losing the censure vote unanimously, 79-0, might cause the President to pause to consider why the rest of the world finds the Cromwell Report so unpersuasive. But that might also require the University of Toronto to abandon status-based arguments rooted in the pure character of both former Dean and Justice Cromwell and begin to defend their conduct on the basis of the objective facts of what transpired. Or, it might just be that President Gertler is surrounded by lawyers telling him what he wants to hear: that the University of Toronto can do no wrong.

Unfortunately for President Gertler and his legal advisors, good lawyers never begin with that premise: they presume wrongdoing and work to exclude it based on evidence. Had the University taken this scandal seriously from Day 1, for example, it would have learned of the shocking behavior of its advancement personnel and would have immediately investigated what happened, and taken proper steps to discipline the wrongdoers for their egregious breach of confidentiality. One might have expected that a Faculty of Law which takes its confidentiality obligations toward job candidates seriously to have also mounted an investigation to determine what happened, and upon discovery of the Assistant Dean’s role
in breaching confidentiality, would have taken steps to discipline her as well.

But no such steps were taken by the University to determine what happened. That in itself is reason to be skeptical of any explanation given by University officials involved in this scandal, to say nothing of why no heed should be given to the President’s conclusory declaration that “Mr. Cromwell’s conclusions are clear and compelling.”

The abrupt withdrawal of an offer to Dr. Valentina Azarova to become the director of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law’s Director of the International Human Rights Program continues to be a source of controversy. After several Canadian newspapers published a series of stories claiming that the offer to Dr. Azarova was withdrawn after David Spiro, a sitting judge on the Tax Court of Canada, contacted the then Dean of the Law Faculty, Ed Iacobucci, and informed him that she was an unworthy hire because of her scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Judge Spiro, before joining the bench, had been a director of a pro-Israel advocacy group, The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. (Ultra Vires, the student newspaper at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, maintains a website with links with the numerous articles and social media posts and tweets that have been written about the controversy since it first broke out in September 2020). In an effort to quell the controversy, Meric Gertler, President of the University of Toronto, appointed Thomas Cromwell, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, to conduct a review of what happened. Justice Cromwell’s report was released to the public on March 29, apparently two weeks after it was completed. Justice Cromwell, despite the limitations he placed on his own findings, namely, that he was not in a position to resolve the conflicting factual accounts regarding what happened, ultimately concluded that he was not prepared to conclude that the former Dean acted to appease pressure from donors. Instead, Justice Cromwell concluded that the Dean sincerely believed that immigration rules posed an insurmountable hurdle for hiring Dr. Azarova, who was not a Canadian citizen. The President of the University seized upon the Cromwell Report’s conclusions, issuing a letter in which he expressed his view that the Report was a complete exoneration of the University and the former Dean’s conduct in the Azarova affair.

I expect at a later date that I will give my own analysis of what is wrong with the Cromwell Report. In brief, I believe that the Reports conclusions go well beyond what can be supported by the facts the Report relates and the limitations that Justice Cromwell imposed upon himself with respect to resolving factual disputes. In the meantime, however, a retired colleague in Political Science, the political theorist Joseph Carens, kindly shared with me his executive summary of a much more detailed criticism of the Cromwell Report that he has prepared but is not yet complete.

In my opinion, his executive summary provides more than sufficient reasons for an objective observer to look at the Cromwell Report with a fair degree of suspicion, and that instead of representing an honest effort to resolve what actually happened, the Cromwell Report was just another step in covering up serious wrongdoing at the University of Toronto, and another case of academic administrators failing to respect academic freedom, especially when if it relates to Palestine and Israel.

I recently published a short essay on AltMuslimah with my thoughts on what Islamic political ethics have to say about the domain of the political in contrast to the domain of the market, and why the integrity of the political requires rejection of candidates such as Trump who conflate private interest — the defining characteristic of the market — with the political — the defining characteristic of which is concern for the public good.

Since The Atlantic published Wajahat Ali’s piece, “A Muslim Among Israeli Settlers,” a firestorm has erupted within the North American Muslim community, largely focused on what seemed to most Muslim and pro-Palestinian readers to be an apology for Zionism, and the author’s relationship with the controversial Muslim Leadership Initiative.  I personally found the piece offensive for many reasons, particularly the way in which it tended to equate the religious fanaticism of the Israeli settlers with the determination of the Palestinians to resist their messianic fantasies.  I was particularly offended by his incredulous reaction to the Palestinian in Khalil (Hebron to those unable to move beyond the time frame of the Old Testament) who, despite being surrounded by fanatic Israeli settlers, was unwilling to sell his house to them for $4 million, or for any price.

In any case, there have been several excellent critiques of this article on Facebook, including this one by Sylvia Chan-Malik, deconstructing the sympathetic language Wajahat used to describe the Zionist settlers, with the judgmental and hectoring rhetoric he reserved for the Palestinians.  Hafsa Kanjwal also had on her Facebook page an excellent critique of Wajahat’s attempt to set the Kashmiri struggle against that of the Palestinians and exposed it for a classic case of “whataboutery”, noting her disgust as a Kashmiri that her struggle would be used to undermine that of the Palestinians.  Many others have been disgusted by his reaction of running to the Atlantic, and publishing there a complaint about the Muslim reaction to his first piece, which led the Islamic Society of North America to disinvite him to their annual conference.  He is now taking on the appearance of a free speech martyr as a result.

I have said before, and I will say it again: I greatly admire Wajahat’s work on Fear, Inc., the Roots of the Islamophobia Network.  It is ironic that since teaming up with MLI, he is actually cooperating with some of the very same funders of the Islamophobia Network in the name of inter-religious dialogue.  In a brief exchange with Wajahat on Facebook a couple of weeks ago after his first Atlantic article, I told him that he was not entitled to speak anywhere, and that he had to take responsibility for his participation in MLI, and he could either admit it was a mistake (which I counseled him to do), or defend it, and try to persuade us that we are mistaken.  But he could not attempt to hide from it, pretend it was not a big deal, and then resent being excluded by Muslim groups who find collaboration with Uber-Zionists to be, well, at a minimum, distasteful.

What many of us may not have heard, however, is the voices of Berkeley MSA students from the years Wajahat mentioned in his Atlantic piece. One of them sent me an essay he wrote in response to the Atlantic piece, defending the Berkeley MSA against Wajahat’s charges, and basically calling him out for many half-truths.  With his permission, I am reproducing the response below:

This is the text of the Presidential Lecture I gave two years ago at Akhawayn University in Morocco. It addresses the current attempts of the Moroccan government to enlist historical conceptions of Sunni orthodoxy along the three dimensions of the legal (Malikism), theology (Ash’ari) and mystical (Sufism) to help resist the allure of Jihadi-Salafism, and the challenges Salafism in general poses to historical Sunnism, but why historical Sunnism, despite these challenges, offers important resources for establishing a democratic Morocco. To take advantage of those resources, however, there must be a sincere commitment to those principles. A cynical attempt to deploy  those resources to resist Salafism while failing to reform the foundations of the public order, however, risks increasing the attractiveness of heterodox religious movements, including, but not limited to, Jihadi-Salafism.

This is the story of an 18th century Moroccan jurist who did not leave any important collection of legal opinions or an important commentary on a Sidi Khalil or otherwise make an important literary contribution to the history of Islamic law.  Nonetheless, he did something else which is probably more important for the possibility of securing a society governed by law: he willingly became a martyr to uphold the integrity of the law, not by revolting and leading a hopeless quest to overthrow the ruler, but simply by sticking to his values, and insisting that he would not compromise the clear demands of the law for the sake of the ruler’s convenience. The ruler was the Moroccan Sultan, Mulay Ismail Here is a link to an account of the relevant events in the Arabic chronicle, al-Istiqsa li-Akhbar al-Magrib al-Aqsa.

Egyptian military claims it has killed the head of Daesh in Sinai.